Don Young

Republicans Haven't Embraced The Reality Of The Pandemic Yet-- So They're Giving Each Other COVID-19

alayham — Sat, 21 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Republicans Haven't Embraced The Reality Of The Pandemic Yet-- So They're Giving Each Other COVID-19 alayham Sat, 03/21/2020 - 01:00

Watch it again. It's a damn good ad. Send it to everyone you know. It's only be used in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan and it really does need to get out everywhere. Even Georgia.Georgia state Senator Brandon Beach was elected in 2012 and he will face a Republican primary opponent on May 19. His Alpharetta-centered suburban Atlanta district, in the northern part of Fulton County and into Cherokee County is so red that the Democrats don't bother running anyone in the general election. The relatively wealthy district is 77.1% white, 7.2% Hispanic, 7.0% black and 6.1% Asian.Beach is a complete Trump fanatic. His issues page includes a "Standing with President Trump-- Brandon Beach stands with President Trump and will make sure Georgia continues to do everything it can to support his America First Agenda." So when Trump declared that the coronavirus pandemic was a hoax, Beach internalized it... and came down with COVID-19. Don't say "good!" He's spread it to the whole legislature-- and everyone is now quarantined.Beach was tested on Saturday for a cough and fever, told to self-isolate but went into the Senate to vote on Monday. On Wednesday his test result came back: positive.

The positive test triggered emails from Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston recommending that all 236 state lawmakers, as well as dozens of staffers from both chambers, quarantine themselves through March 30.And [Gov.] Kemp, who said he would not self-isolate, said Thursday that Beach’s behavior is a “good example why people need to do what we’re asking them to do.”... In the email from Senate officials, an aide to Duncan said that Beach, who wasn’t initially identified, had exhibited symptoms dating to March 10. That sparked outrage from some legislators infuriated by Beach’s decision.“I’m shaking with rage. We were told if we had symptoms to refrain from going to the Capitol on Monday. Senator Brandon Beach knew he was exhibiting symptoms since MARCH THE 10TH!” wrote state Rep. Scot Turner on Facebook.“I have an elderly hospice patient at home. He irresponsibly stayed all day at the Capitol on Monday and exposed all of us.”...The governor, meanwhile, said Thursday he didn’t plan to get screened for the illness because he “severely limited” his recent interactions. He said he entered the Capitol on Monday from a first-floor entrance and went straight to his office.“I never interacted with any legislators,” he said. “I was asked to come speak to the caucus meetings, I told them that was a bad idea. We ended up doing that by phone calls on Sunday night and Monday morning.”Lawmakers indefinitely suspended the legislative session last week because of the growing pandemic, though they were unexpectedly summoned back to the Capitol by Kemp after he declared a public health emergency.

Another Republican state senator, Bruce Thompson from the district next door (14th)-- Cherokee and Bartow counties, with a tiny silver of Cobb is in intensive care awaiting the results of his coronavirus test.Many Republicans are still making light of the pandemic. The oldest Republican in the House, senile Alaska congressman Don Young was yucking it top in Alaska last week, referring to COVID-19 as the "beer virus". He told a gathering of senior citizens at Mat-Su Senior Services, a Palmer nonprofit that provides housing and services for the elderly that COVID-19 is not as deadly as some past viruses. The 86 year old Republican said "They call it the coronavirus. I call it the beer virus. How do you like that? It attacks us senior citizens. I’m one of you. I still say we have to as a nation and state go forth with everyday activities."

That advice contradicts recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and information posted to Young’s own official campaign and congressional Facebook pages and his congressional website. The speech reflects how, as many elected officials work to calm their constituents, their messages sometimes lag behind or defy the advice of experts who are urging Americans, particularly older Americans who are most likely to die from the virus, to stay at home and avoid contact with others....Young said he’d flown into Alaska the night before and began the far-ranging talk by quoting Franklin Roosevelt: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”That was a time of war, Young told the crowd. “Whether you realize it or not, we are at war now. But mostly because of the presentations by the mass media.”After the Friday luncheon, Young on Saturday attended an NRA fundraiser in the Mat-Su, according to posts on his campaign Facebook page. Meantime, he skipped a House vote in D.C. on a federal coronavirus relief package.Young criticized the relief package in his remarks.“We have to be aware of that because even the president’s proposal sounds good, $50 billion, $50 billion we don’t have. We’re gonna borrow that money from the future generations,” he said.“We (would) solve a problem right now that's been created primarily by hysteria,” Young said.“We can overcome this mess if we just be calm," Young said at one point. “We will prevail. You cannot prevail by hiding and responding to fear.“Fielding questions from the crowd about international travel and testing, Young compared the illness to past epidemics: “Again, guys, this is blown out of proportion about how deadly this is. It’s deadly, but it’s not nearly as deadly as the other viruses we have."

It's not just old people who seem infected with brainlessness-- and not all these Spring Break partiers seem to be Republicans either, do they?The first member of Congress to admit to testing positive to COVID-19 is Florida Republican, Mario Diaz-Balart. Too much time at Mar-A-Lago? Republican operative Stuart Stevens was a top Mitt Romney campaign strategist from Mississippi who had previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain, plus on campaigns for Thad Cochran (R-MS), Haley Barbour (R-MS), Tom Ridge (R-PA), Dick Lugar (R-IN), Mel Martinez (R-FL), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Bob Riley (R-AL). Yesterday Stevens wrote that all Republicans share the blame for the state of the union: "Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me-- and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better. But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way. Many of us heard a warning sound we chose to ignore, like that rattle in your car you hear but figure will go away. Now we’re broken down, with plenty of time to think about what should have been done."

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Is There Something Strange Going On Up In Alaska?

alayham — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Is There Something Strange Going On Up In Alaska? alayham Thu, 10/25/2018 - 02:00

Mike Dunleavy-- does he also have a thing for drag queens?Last week I went to two Ted Lieu fundraising events for California candidates. And he mentioned Alaska with times, asserting that Independent Alyse Galvin was starting to close the gap between herself and forever Congressman Don Young. 538 gives her a 29.3% chance to win (2 in 7) and there are no polls showing her ahead. The most recent poll, from Lake Research gives Young a 48-44% lead. Yesterday, Cook moved their prediction from Likely Republican to Lean Republican. She outraised him in the 3rd quarter-- $643,000 to $236,000-- but as of the September 30 FEC report, he still had $312,351 cash on hand to her $274,505.

Galvin stresses her Independent affiliation and is listed as an "Undeclared" who is the "Alaska Democratic Party nominee" on the ballot. She's hoping to attract independent and third-party voters, who were a big reason President Trump only won Alaska 51 percent to 37 percent in 2016. However, her ads against Young's healthcare and tax votes mirror Democratic ads across the country, and Young is arguing she's a liberal Democrat in disguise.At 85, Young is the oldest House incumbent seeking reelection in 2018, and Galvin argues he's served past his usefulness and is in the pocket of lobbyists. But he isn't shying away from a fight, and his ads warn that Galvin would vote for Nancy Pelosi and enable a crackdown on Alaska's energy industry. Young is still the favorite, but Gov. Bill Walker's last-minute exit and endorsement of Democrat Mark Begich adds an additional layer of uncertainty.

OK, so that's a little interesting but not "strange." The gubernatorial race is where to look for "strange." You may have read in theist few days that the incumbent governor of Alaska, Bill Walker, an independent, suddenly pulled out of the race and then said he did it to help Democrat Mark Begich beat far right Republican Mike Dunleavy. "Walker," wrote Becky Bohrer for the AP, "said Friday he could not win a three-way race and that Alaskans deserve a choice other than Dunleavy. There are a lot of things he and Begich don't agree on, but Walker said Begich would be better for Alaska. Whether Begich can overtake the presumed front-runner remains to be seen with two-and-a-half weeks before the election. Begich, who said his campaign was "inundated" with calls after Walker's announcement, thinks he can win. Some Democrats and independents had long worried Walker and Begich would split the vote, handing the race to Dunleavy. Walker, a former Republican, was elected in 2014 with Democratic support. The clincher for Walker's decision to leave the race, it appears, was his lieutenant governor's abrupt resignation days earlier over an inappropriate overture to a woman."OK, that seemed a bit odd, but not strange. There are no reports of "strange" anywhere in the media. But sources on the ground tell me a pretty shocking story. Back on primary night, Mike Dunleavy's watch party was in a ballroom at the Aviator Hotel in Anchorage. One of the Democrats' watch parties was at Mad Myrna's, Anchorage's best known gay bar. Were they trolling Dunleavy?Dunleavy has been an ardent, even hysterical homophobe for his whole political life, not so much someone with a hatred of the LGBTQ community as someone with something to hide. You know what a drag queen is, right? As opposed to a transsexual? A drag queen has a penis. And that, we're hearing from several sources, is how Dunleavy, a former state senator from-- where else?-- Wasilla, likes it. At least 2 drag queens have claimed to have had sexual relationships with the homophobic Dunleavy. I was hoping to present this news along with a tape-- but I don't have it, at least not yet. I'm not going to discuss this topic again until I do though.   I should mention that one of my best Alaska contacts told that "We should do an action where we send in folks in drag to one of his events." In the drag community he's known as "Prometheus."

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Pentagon Tested Chemical Weapons on 6,000 US Troops — Won’t Release Details

alayham — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 19:04:37 +0000

Pentagon Tested Chemical Weapons on 6,000 US Troops — Won’t Release Details alayham Fri, 07/14/2017 - 21:04

(ANTIMEDIA) Washington, D.C. — Though the United States’ ruling establishment points fingers at other governments — namely the current Syrian regime — for allegedly using chemical weapons, the American military has a history of using this vicious ammunition on its own soldiers – and fifty years later, the Pentagon is reserving its right to keep the details secret.
Between 1962 and 1974, during the Vietnam War era, the Pentagon tested nerve agents like Sarin gas and Vx and bacteria like E.Coli on as many as 6,000 military personnel in “Project 112” and SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense). Most of the military members exposed to the chemical and biological weapons were in the Army and Navy, and according to McClatchy D.C., “The purpose was to identify any weaknesses to U.S. ships and troops and develop a response plan for a chemical attack.”
The outlet reported this week that though news of these practices first emerged in 2000, the Pentagon released only limited data on the tests at the request of the Department of Veterans Affairs. In the years since, the VA has commissioned studies by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to investigate the tests’ effects.
“While they found no significant difference in the health of veterans involved in the tests and those who were not,” McClatchy notes, “the authors acknowledged the difficulty of studying this issue.”
This is peculiar considering, as McClatchy notes, “According to DOD documents, death can occur within 10 to 15 minutes of exposure to a fatal dose of Vx.
After exposure to a sufficient amount of Sarin, symptoms include, ‘difficulty breathing, dimness of vision, confusion, drowsiness, coma, and death.’”
According to the researchers who attempted to study the effects of the tests, multiple factors made it difficult to assess the extent of the damage to the veterans’ health.
“Our task was challenging because of the passage of time since the tests, and because many of the documents related to the tests remain classified,” last year’s report said, according to McClatchy. “Our requests for declassification of additional documents were not approved.”
On Wednesday in Washington, Ken Wiseman, senior vice commander of the Virginia branch of The Veterans of Foreign Wars, stressed the importance of uncovering the truth about these tests, which remained under wraps for decades. Despite the Pentagon’s admission in 2000, the public — and the veterans exposed to the chemicals — still know very little about them.
“Veterans were exposed to some of the most extreme and hazardous agents… and they now suffer from debilitating health care conditions,” Wiseman said.
Some members of Congress have attempted to force the secretary of defense to release more information on the tests. This week, Reps. Mike Thompson, D-CA., Don Young, R-AK, and Walter Jones, R-N.C. advocated an amendment that would have forced the Pentagon to release more information. However, a House Rules committee rejected the proposal.
In the Senate, Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas, is still pushing for more accountability from the Pentagon.
Moran said in a statement:
“We have a duty to make certain our service members’ health is protected both in and out of service, and providing access to classified military records that may prove exposure to toxic substances is critical to veterans applying for VA benefits and service-connection.”
This is hardly the first time the U.S. government has conducted morally questionable tests on Americans — or others. Around the same time as the Vietnam War, the military used toxic Agent Orange as a weapon in Vietnam, causing birth defects and health issues in generations of Vietnamese, as well as tarnishing the health of U.S. soldiers exposed to it, from cancer to neurological diseases, like Parkinson’s disease. The military is still paying out settlements to soldiers.
The use of depleted uranium in Iraq during the Bush era, as well as in other conflicts, is also likely causing a wide range of health issues among soldiers and victims of the United States’ military incursions.
Civilians have also been subject to government tests that damage their health. The infamous Tuskegee experiments, which began in 1932 at the behest of the U.S. Department of Public Health, tricked poor black —some of whom unknowingly had syphilis — into thinking they were getting free medical care for other issues while the researchers left their condition untreated. The Washington Post has noted they were “simply being watched until they died and their bodies examined for ravages of the disease.”
In the 1940s and 1950s in Guatemala, the U.S. government, along with Johns Hopkins University, infected hundreds of unwitting civilians with syphilis and a range of other STDs for the sake of research. Johns Hopkins was hit with a billion dollar lawsuit over it, and the Department of Health and Human Services, the office the president, and the U.S. Secretary of State were all forced to apologize.
Meanwhile, American veterans are still waiting for accountability some 50 years later. “It’s been over 50 years since these tests were conducted and the DOD has yet to provide a complete accounting of what truly happened to our service members,” Rep. Thompson said this week. “Veterans can’t wait any longer.”
McClatchy reports that the Pentagon and VA “did not immediately respond to request for comment.”

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Matt Moore Isn't Running Against Don Young In Alaska Just For The Sake Of Running

alayham — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 22:00:00 +0000

Matt Moore Isn't Running Against Don Young In Alaska Just For The Sake Of Running alayham Sat, 12/07/2013 - 23:00

Interesting House race shaping up in Alaska this cycleMatt Moore is a Democrat running for Alaska's gigantic at-large House seat, presently occupied by ethically-challenged Don Young. I spoke with him on the phone earlier this week and I;m happy to report that he has a refreshingly progressive world view. Matt has a BS degree in Geology and worked in the oil and gas business for several years prior to moving to Alaska. He's a small business owner and has been managing medical practices for the past 23 years. He and his wife live in Anchorage and have 2 children. We got into a discussion of the Pebble West Mine and I asked him to do a guest post about it because I thought it would highlight a very tangible difference why he's running for Congress and why Don Young still refuses to retire (after 40 scandal-wracked years!)Saving The Bristol Bay Watershed From Toxic Wasteby Matt Moore, candidate for Congress, AlaskaAlaska is known for its natural beauty, unspoiled landscapes and resources. Alaska's Bristol Bay area is home to the largest run of wild salmon in the world and the people who live in this area depend on fishing for their income and for food. When you hear the name “Pebble,” you will think of a small rounded rock. You may also suppose the proposed Pebble Mine project is small and innocuous but that is simply not the case. The Bristol Bay watershed is the location of a proposed open pit mine where outside interests hope to develop copper, gold and molybdenum. The Pebble West Mine will be two miles wide and thousands of feet deep. Multiple earthen dams will be built to retain billions of tons of waste rock and chemicals. This toxic waste will forever remain in one of two proposed artificial lakes with no guarantee that leakage will never occur. At least one of these retaining dams will be over 700 feet high and over 4 miles long. The Pebble East Mine would be significantly deeper and would likely be mined by underground methods.Supporters say that the mine will have a working life of up to 60 years and it will create good paying, full-time jobs in the area while putting tax money into state coffers. They would also claim that this new source of minerals would therefore reduce U.S. dependence on foreign sources of minerals. Opponents do not disagree with those claims, but say that the risk to the environment, the watershed and the people living in the area far outweigh the potential benefits. Most Alaskans are opposed to the mine and are not willing to risk the commercial salmon fisheries, the subsistence fishing and sports fishing opportunities in the Bristol Bay watershed. People living in the Bristol Bay area, federally recognized tribes, and the Bristol Bay Native Corporation are also opposed to the Pebble Mine.In July 2010, Alaska’s lone Congressman, Don Young, introduced a new bill that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to veto the Army Corps of Engineers permit for discharge of fill materials, dredge materials, waste rock, etc. under the authority of the Clean Water Act, Section 404(c). Young said that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers can do the job without the EPA's involvement. He further stated that projects have been repeatedly shut down and delayed by the EPA.One should ask if the EPA executes its duties fairly and even-handedly. The answer is yes. The EPA reviews approximately 60,000 permit applications a year and has been engaged in this process since 1972. The odds are overwhelmingly against the EPA abusing their final 404c veto power. In fact, over the last 39 years, the EPA has used their 404(c) final veto power only 13 times. That being said, why would Don Young go to the trouble of stripping the EPA of its 404(c) powers? The only logical reason would be that Young wanted to completely clear the way for the proposed Pebble Mine and guarantee their plan would not be stopped. Imagine the value to investors of a guaranteed green light on this multi-billion dollar project.Don Young may claim he is facilitating mining development in the Bristol Bay watershed for the benefit of all Alaskans. Or he could claim that he is fighting the good fight against the federal government because they are too involved in business transactions, and they do not understand how we do things in Alaska. But these are red herrings. Over the last 4 election cycles, Young has received over $200,000 in campaign contributions from energy and natural resources PACs including mining PACs. It is clear that these significant campaign contributions are more important to Don Young than representing the best interests and wishes of his constituents.

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